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Micheal Landy is probably best known for his production line of destruction: Break Down 2001, a two week performance destroying all his possessions. Not reclaiming and recycling just destroying and deconstructing everything he owned on a recycling conveyor belt for two weeks until it was all reduced to dust.Took three years to complete. Firstly he made an inventory of everything he owned. An existential audit, a cataloguing, stock taking absolutely everything valuable and not. After he finished nothing but powder was left. it’s location on Oxford Street in an empty shop unit. The performance was busy and and purposeful in an unusual location. He destroyed art works by artists like Gillian wearing. It was a critique of consumerism right in the midst of the consumerist world. Break Down seemed to be his personal experience as well as the works. He disappears for some time after the event and then emerges with fine small drawings... Micheal landy goes on to produce fine drawings of weeds. These almost expands the idea that he has had a breakdown. Focus on the tiny things. Small drawings of small things. Looking at the smallness of the world. Survival in small steps...

More recently he has produced a reconstruction of his own childhood home Semi-Detached: Lisa John Maureen and Micheal Landy.Seems to suggest he has moved into Relational Aesthetics. The house filled one of the Clore Galeries in Tate Britain. It seems the opposite of the destruction of all the possessions. This is a preservation a recounting of a place and a container of possessions.